18 April 2018 (London) – The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) announced that it will commit £9.2 million (USD 13.15 million) of research funding to DeTACT (Development of Triple Artemisinin Combination Therapies), a large multi-centre trial in 5 Asian and 10 African countries that aims to develop two new safe and effective malaria treatments using combinations of existing antimalarial drugs.

The issue is particularly urgent: In September 2017, scientists warned in The Lancet Infectious Diseases that a very artemisinin drug resistant P falciparum malaria “superbug” had spread from western Cambodia to north-eastern Thailand, southern Laos and into southern Vietnam, causing a large increase in treatment failures in malaria patients across the entire Mekong Sub-region and posing a serious threat to malaria control and eradication efforts.

Led by the Bangkok-based Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), a collaboration between Mahidol University, Thailand, and the University of Oxford and Wellcome from the UK, DeTACT will use a comprehensive approach to develop and study in Asia and in African children the safety, efficacy, ethics, economics and acceptability of two co-formulated and co-blistered Triple Artemisinin Combination Therapies (TACTs) – artemether-lumefantrine+amodiaquine and DHA-piperaquine+mefloquine.

DeTACT arises from the recently completed DFID-supported TRACII (Targeting Resistance to Artemisinin Collaboration II) study, which found that both of the TACTs were well tolerated and safe.

Importantly, TRAC II found that the two TACTs were highly effective against artemisinin combination therapy (ACT)-resistant falciparum malaria, even in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, where antimalarial resistance has led to high failure rates of the DHA-piperaquine ACTs.

“DeTACT is a very important study: Increasing drug resistance in Southeast Asia jeopardizes the treatment of falciparum malaria, a potential fatal disease, and malaria elimination is only possible if we have effective drugs to treat the disease,” said Oxford Prof. Arjen Dondorp, Head of Malaria at MORU and principal investigator for DeTACT.

“These triple artemisinin combinations therapies (TACTs) can provide an effective and safe malaria treatment, using a combination of already available antimalarial drugs,” said Prof. Dondorp. “We thank DFID and UK Aid for supporting this important work.”

MORU Research Physician Dr Rob van der Pluijm, who coordinated the TRACII study, explained why the TACTs are so important: “Antimalarial resistance is causing great difficulty in treating falciparum malaria in South-East Asia, yet new antimalarials are not expected within the next 4-5 years. TACTs could be a viable way to treat multi-drug resistant malaria and prevent or at least delay the emergence of antimalarial resistance in other parts of Asia and in Africa.”